Paperclay patches on bisqueware

Several months ago, I wrote about paperclay patches, mostly on greenware. In that piece, I made mention of using paperclay patches on bisqued work as well, but didn't go into much detail.

I recently had a group of kids (and some of their parents) over to play with clay. Alas, someone made a piece that exploded in the kiln, taking two pieces of kid work with it.  Disaster!

Young artists do need to learn that sometimes things happen, sometimes things don't work out, but this was not to be one of those times. I seized the opportunity to both save their work and show you what I was talking about.

The slip itself was made of a 12-egg carton (post egg), water, and roughly a litre of the same clay I intended to join. In this case, we used terra cotta. I used the stick blender to pulverize the slip quite well, but I didn't sieve it or anything like that.I just ran my fingers through it to be sure it felt smooth.

The flat man (something from some computer game I know nothing about) had a fairly clean break right across the eyes.  I dipped both halves of the break in the paperclay slip and let them dry slightly before smoothing over with more of the slip. The man is pretty delicate at this stage, so I put him on a cardboard bat to minimize stress on the join until he got into the kiln.  I treated the join on both sides, letting it dry a bit, then adding more as the drying slip receded into the hairline gap.

Also a casualty of the shattered piece was a turtle. Both the front arms came off, and none too cleanly.

Again, both sides dipped in the slip, then smoothed over the outside a few times to make the join stronger.

Although I have occasionally used this patch technique on my own work and glazed the pieces straight away, I decided to re-bisque these. The creations of children and beginners gets special handling over here. Raw joins are just too delicate for beginning glazers.

I think it's probably best to re-bisque, even if not strictly necessary.

After being re-fired, the joins are vaguely visible to those who are looking for them, but the kid who made this had no idea it had broken until I told her later, after the finished, glazed piece was in her hands.

Both the turtle and the flat man benefit from being fairly rustic in their intended surface. It is possible that my joins here are actually too smooth be part of the original textures.Perhaps there is enough natural variation that I was able to get away with it.

Here is the back of flat man's face. The join is a bit more obvious here if you're looking for it, but it was not a problem for the artist, who was glad it had been given a second chance.

If I had been patching pieces  with precise and smooth surfaces, I would have taken more care to build up a slight excess and then sand the join down again post-re-bisquing.

Once glazed, both pieces had the ring of an intact pot to them when struck with a metal tool, not the dull thud of a cracked piece.

 This is lovely. I would never look at this and wonder if it had ever been shattered into multiple pieces. Our little secret.

Flat man is all set to be displayed on a wall somewhere, ready to do ... whatever it is he's meant to do.  His maker is very pleased with the results.







I can't promise this technique will always work. Clay can be fickle. There are times, though, that it's worth having this trick in your arsenal, just in case there are no other options.

All Saints for Christmas

I've just had my acceptance notice for this:

Anglian Potters at All Saints, Jesus Lane, Cambridge
This selling exhibition runs from Saturday, 17th November (mulled wine and mince pies between 12 noon and 2 p.m.), and closes on Sunday, 16th December.
Opening times: Mondays to Saturdays 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Sundays 12.30 a.m. to 4 p.m.  

There are usually 70-80 potters participating in this, so it's a great chance to see a broad sampling of what clay can do.

I'm heading out to the studio now to work on a commission. I wonder if any new ideas will happen while I'm out there.

Is there anything you especially want to see from me when you visit this show? At the Ickworth Wood Fair, one woman told me she had gone to the show last year to top up her game piece collection, but I wasn't participating that time. 

Dragonfly

This morning we drove the the Wayland Dragonfly Gallery in Watton, Norfolk to drop off some Face Plates for an upcoming show. Everyone was very nice and helpful in providing what I needed to make it all look good.

So now if you can't make it to the exhibition, you know what of mine you're missing, and if you see something here that you must have, you know where to buy it!


The plates on the lowest surface are in the vicinity of 11" round. The small one at the top is about 6.5" round.

It looked like some really interesting paintings were going up in other areas.

Wayland Dragonfly Summer Exhibition

I'll have some face plates in this exhibition. It should be really good. Stop by if you get the chance.  Please RSVP to the email shown above if you're going to the preview, otherwise, just drop in during the two weeks. More information can be found here:  https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Wayland-Dragonfly-Gallery/198905453480213

For completeness of the Face Plate experience

 I don't think I ever showed you these. Most of them came out of the kiln quite close to the start of Cambridge Open Studios, when I had other things on my mind. No decals, just glaze and faces.


This one is green with black on porcelain.

 Peacock blue with black on porcelain.

 Brown with multi-coloured splashes on V9G.

 Mostly V9G, except the green one in the upper right corner. That's porcelain.

These were actually in the very first batch. Both V9G using glaze to accent the faces.





So you see, Face Plates are not just one thing.

Open studio closed

The yellow flags of Cambridge Open Studios have come in for 2012. The doors are closed, and clean up has begun. If you couldn't make it, I'm sorry to have missed you, but let me see if I can re-create the experience for you in some small part. 

A few questions and comments came up repeatedly. Let me share some of them with you.

(1)  You're American? Where are you from?

I am originally from the US, and although I have been here for 13 years and now also hold British citizenship, I have failed to gain any sort of accent at all.  I've lived a lot of places in Left-Pondia, mostly across the middle (IL, NJ, CA, IN, UT, and HI just for a while). Most recently I lived in San Francisco, and would like to claim it, but I don't know if 10 years is enough to make me from there. Thirteen years is not enough to make me from here.

(2)  Did you hand paint these?

No, I bought vintage decals from a shut down pottery up north. I like the "found" quality of them. I also alter my mugs and such with "found" texture items, so I see this as consistent with my style. I think the work is still pretty distinctively mine. I might make my own decals in the future, but I'm waiting for a clear vision of what they should be.

(3)  Do you do workshops/classes?

I never have because I never had the space. My studio is very small. We've got a new possible working space now, so it's not out of the question that there could be some hand building events in the future, but nothing is organized yet. 

(4)  You make jewellery? I didn't know you make jewellery!

Yes, I do. It started with making coloured porcelain beads, which I intended to sell to crafters, but I made a few samples to work out any problems, and never quite stopped. I'm now playing around a bit with copper and glass as well.

 Look! Evidence!

A little closer on a few of those.

... and some earrings. I ran out of the cards I display them on, so some are in little plastic pouches. More cards have been ordered.

 Porcelain bead necklaces. I add other beads to add shine and take some of the weight out. My beads are still the main feature, I think.

More necklaces and some bracelets.  Short on detail here, but you get the general idea.

I found this funky wire tree with grabby clip things, and snapped it up to make an earring tree.

I still sell beads. I even sold some today.




Thanks to everyone who came out to talk to me and see what I do. I really appreciate that you braved the weather, and came out to our little village just to see me.



There are still two weekends left of Cambridge Open Studios 2012. I'm going to go see other studios. I hope you go out and visit some too, if you are able.

Cambridge Open Studios 2012

 First things first. I had to unload the kiln. New butter dishes made of Audrey Blackman porcelain. They're impressed with lace doilies I've acquired over the past few months, all soft-slab hand-built. I love throwing on the wheel, but sometimes hand building is the only thing that will do.

 On this side of the room is older work. Crackpots, game pieces, porcelain jars, platters, fat folk, and so on.

This is in our conservatory, which was a building site 4 days ago. It's a big improvement over the tent I've used in previous years. Torrential rains are a lot more tolerable in solid construction.

See that white door through the window on the left of the image? That's the door to the actual studio, which as you can see, is open. I did do some jewellery in the display room, so it was a working studio today too.

Mugs!  I just love to make mugs. There are too many on the display, but you can live with that, can't you?









This is the new work for this year. Face plates, butter dishes, soap dishes, and small people (down at the far end).

I expected low attendance for the first day because there is so much going on in town. The Olympic torch came through, there was something on Parker's Piece, and it seems like every village school had some sort of fete. I wasn't disappointed with my low expectations, but had a really nice time talking to the people who did come.

I'd worked so hard to get this already despite the heavy rains this year not allowing work to dry and the builders having delays that it was almost nice to have the enforced inactivity. I'm all rested up now, though, so some Sunday visitors will see a perkier me. 

I'm open again on Sunday from 11-6, and the same again next Saturday and Sunday (14-15 July). I'm number 97 in your guide book.